Northbridge Plaza raid: Police hunt for two people

Sydney's most expensive school renovations

A group of Sydney private schools are planning to spend up to $200 million in building new facilities.

Reddam House, headquartered in Sydney's eastern suburbs, faced the Fair Work Commission in December over allegations that it had not paid some of its early learning staff overtime, penalties or provided them with pay slips.

The allegations relate to a "state of the art early learning centre" that the 800-student school established on the north shore, last year.

Reddam House has been accused of underpaying early learning teachers by the Independent Education Union. Photo: Christopher Pearce

The Reddam ELS centre for children aged between one and six years features "interactive piazza spaces, critical thinking studios and breakout areas", the Reddam House website says.

Despite Reddam's promotion of the early learning centre based in St Leonards as "one of the highlights of 2015", the school said the early learning staff were never employed by Reddam itself, a K-12 institution that earned $18 million in student fees last year.

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Reddam's barrister, Christopher Parkin, told the commission that the staff were employed by Crawford Education Pty Ltd and were therefore not subject to the award agreements negotiated between Reddam House and the IEU.

​Crawford Education is directed by Reddam House founder Graeme Crawford, an Australian-South African education pioneer whose Reddam group now boasts more than 21 schools across Britain, Australia and South Africa. More than 6000 students now attend Crawford schools in South Africa alone.

The company is registered to the address of Reddam's main campus in Woollahra, Australian Securities and Investments Commission documents show.

Reddam and Crawford Education are both parties to the commission proceedings.

The union alleges that staff were forced to sign agreements that offered lower rates of pay and job security than one successfully secured by the union in 2011.

In its submission to the commission the union claims that two staff members have since been dismissed from the early learning centre after refusing to sign new agreements with Crawford Education. The union described the move as "alarming".

In December, the union took the unusual step of asking the commission to exercise its rights of entry to force Reddam to submit its letters of employment, group certificates and other evidence.

Reddam, which charges students up to $28,000 a year, has disputed the power of the commission.

"There remains a question about the extent to which the commission has jurisdiction to make any order in relation to this matter," Mr Parkin argued on December 4.

Mr Parkin also argued that the volume of evidence would be impractical to submit in a short time frame and that the school had been acting lawfully with their obligations as employers.

Commissioner Donna McKenna dismissed his argument over the commission's jurisdiction and concluded that the school was "determined not to advance anything to assist the commission in clarifying the identity of the employer".

On December 14 she ordered the school to submit employment documents to the union.

The ongoing dispute comes as Reddam looks set to further expand its for-profit early learning centre operations after purchasing the former Masada College site in Lindfield for $6.5 million in July.